Coming soon

I'd like to say a big thanks to all the new people coming to the blog this week. My Google Analytics report looks like a teenager's growth spurt right now. Welcome!

I'm reading The Whites by Harry Brandt and liking it so much that I'm going to do a video review.

Another new title, debut author Anne Flett-Giordano's Marry Kiss Kill, it screams 'beach read' in a really good way comes out in June. If Raymond Chandler and Chelsea Handler had a love child (fictionally speaking) it would be this book, good news is that Anne is hard at work on another, in between her TV writing (she has written for Frasier and Hot in Cleveland)

Another one to look out for is Brian Grazer's A Curious Mind, dropping in April. Grazer has been having what he calls 'curiosity conversations' (usually an hour long) with people ranging from Jim Lovell to former secretary of State Condeleeza Rice for years now. Pretty much since he entered the movie business; as a legal clerk delivering papers for Warner Brothers. And while a talk with Jim Lovell might have led to Apollo 13 becoming a movie it also was inspired by talks Grazer had with many others including Veronica De Negri, a  Chilean political prisoner whose incredible inner strength enabled her to survive unspeakable challenges.

These talks do not always go in the direction Grazer thinks they are going to, the ones with Isaac Asimov and Edward Teller would be prime examples.  You might think Grazer does this because he's well Brian Grazer movie producer but the truth is he's never not been curious. That curiosity, he feels is being bred out of our youth and this is his way of encouraging us to become curious all over again. If I were graduating this year I'd be intrigued and fascinated by this book.

Cool Books - the website

I name this website Cool Books. God bless her and all who sail in her.

Going live

Almost. Regular readers will notice a little addition on the top right of the blog. A link back to the website.  I have a couple of permissions to get on the book talk page and then we're on for launch. By all means hop over and have a look at the main page.

March is in like a lion

Reviews of lots of different genres this month, paranormal romance (Its MJ Rose, its good), history, bio and some cracking thrillers.

The Witch of Painted Sorrows, MJ Rose

Sandrine Salome leaves 19^th Century New York, fleeing both her sterile marriage and her grief over her father’s death. Arriving in Paris she is drawn to the opulent home, Maison de la Lune, where her father grew up and where her grandmother, a famed courtesan, still holds court. She finds the house shuttered, her grandmother claims that the place needs extensive restoration and Sandrine believes her, at first.

Going by her maiden name Sandrine Verlaine she becomes enchanted by Paris and her rekindled desire to paint coupled with her exploration of all that is sensuous and passionate opens a passage to the past, to the original owner, La Lune. Parts of the house that have been closed off for centuries open for Sandrine and the young architect who will become her lover.

Her grandmother refuses to discuss family history with Sandrine, saying love destroys the women of the Verlaine line because it lets ‘her’ in but the arrival of Sandrine’s husband, convinced she has evidence that could bring him down causes Sandrine to unleash powerful forces that could lead to her destruction.

All the Old Knives, Olen Steinhauer

Carmel, California: the waitress seats two former colleagues, a still-pretty woman wearing a wedding ring and a careworn older man at the only non-reserved table in the overpriced restaurant. The couple, Henry and Celia, used to be lovers but this isn’t a cozy catch-up.

Henry is CIA, Celia used to be; until a disastrous airplane hijacking put the Vienna office under a microscope. Personally and professionally Henry and the rest of his team barely survived the fallout. Now, six years later, rumours of a mole have resurfaced and Henry has been sent to question everyone involved and bury the case once and for all.

Tonight’s meal comes with a side of revenge and betrayal. 

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Eric Larson

For many of us who sat through history class, we think we know that the sinking of the Lusitania was the incident that brought the U.S. into WW1, and we are wrong.

Larson, hooked by the records of that last voyage presents a more expanded, no less disturbing view. He uses a myriad of documentation from Cunard, Woodrow Wilson’s papers, Winston Churchill’s memoirs and the log of U20 the U-boat that sank the Lusitania to bring the events surrounding the sinking to life.

The Bullet, Mary Louise Kelly

Caroline Cashion is an accomplished professor of French literature. She leads an academic life surrounded by a close and loving family; until a routine medical procedure takes everything she thinks she knows and shreds it into little pieces. 

Caroline has a bullet lodged in her neck, close to the base of her skull. Evidence of the murder of her real parents, this lump of lead could help identify her birth parents’ killer. Can justice be served over three decades later, or is the killer willing to come out of hiding to kill again.

Hammer Head, Nina MacLaughlin

Nina MacLaughlin’s day job as a journalist is steady, brings in a solid paycheck and yet she knows it isn’t what she wants to do for the rest of her life. Answering a Craigslist ad for ‘carpenter’s assistant: woman strongly urged to apply’ Nina tries out and gets the job. To start with she doesn’t know a Philips from a Flathead but she’s willing to learn and Mary is more than willing to teach her.  

Her work with Mary, an experienced carpenter takes Nina from typing virtual sentences in cyberspace to building physical lasting objects in the real world. Nina transforms her attitude, her body and her mind in the process.

An inspiring book, that shows us that there is more out there than the nine to five grind if we go looking for it.